So I took the light apart because the fans are too loud to be secret and I cut the wire that supplied electricity to the 3 fans. I have been germinating my seeds in soil since 4/20 and thought today would be a good idea to add some light. Well it was on for about an hour and I went back to check on it and the light was hot, not too hot to keep my hand on but it was definitely not running cool. I'm just wondering if I'm going to have a fire hazard when it comes to having my lights on 18/6 hours a day. Let's be honest, weed is just weed, not a very good reason for my house to burn down. So my question is do you think I will run into any major problems not running the fans? Or should I take it apart again and hook them back up? I'm just worried about the wired heating up too much and having the insulation around them melting and causing the wires to short. Tell me what you think!
reconnect fans; possibly add rubber or fiber washers where fans are mounted to minimize noise from vibration. Also consider providing ambient sound to counter fan noise; always have the radio playing classical or something.
Alright that's not a bad idea and it's not a sound from vibration, it's more of a humming noise... Like when you leave an Xbox running, but an Xbox running is hard to explain when it's coming from inside your closet...
If you have it apart anyway just replace the fans with some quiet ones. Any 12v PC fans will be fine. Just buy 3 silent fans and put them in. Running it without cooling will eventually damage the LED drivers you need airflow on the heatsink. I've got the same light and the noise is way louder than I expected
Yeah looks like I gotta take it back apart and just deal with the noise I guess, but yeah a lot louder then expected... Not cool haha
I think I'm going to replace the fans on mine too, I don't really need to cause I have a 180cfm centrifugal drowning out the noise but I'd like to see whats going on inside the blackstar and using some better quality quiet fans wouldn't hurt
How much do those lights run? What size HPS do they replace. I would buy better fans at radio shack and wire them in. The light is like a computer and the fans where there for a reason. To keep things cool.
It's probably not as loud as you think. You're just really focused on it. Who are you hiding it from? It's just going to be harder to hide as it grows...
I too purchased leds and do not like how loud there are... I am actually just going to replace them with silent muffin fans as someone suggested. DO NOT run that light for 18/6 without the fans, that heatsink will go for sure How is that 240 treating ya? It was a toss up between those and my current lights
The Blackstar is a great light, what did you go with Blood? Props to OP for inspiring me to finally get off my ass an replace those noisy low quality fans!
I had my blackstar apart to put another power supply in it, those fans are kind of loud so it's not out of the question to replace them with something quieter. I sure wouldn't run that light without any cooling at all you could have left at least one fan hooked up. I'm not sure how hot an LED panel can get but I can say I sure wouldn't wanna find out-especially since they are running 18 hours out of the day.
I went with the UFOs from BySen, they are the original manufacture of Blackstar LEDs The only thing that kept me from getting the blackstar is the price. The markup on their products is just too huge, and I didn't have 5K to drop on lighting. So I bought from China, and hey guess what, they work GREAT. Fast shipping, and a 3 year warrenty on the lights I don't open up. I got 9 lights total, and when they are all on with my ventilation system, bubblers, and heaters in winter time, my stealth cabinet doesn't sound so stealth, a 60 DB hum from the closet usually catches attention. If these lights can flower my girls well, I will be hooked on LEDs and probably will never look back at hps again Thank you OP for inspiring me to finally change these fan
Well I actually haven't used the black star yet because I'm in the beginning stages of my first grow, it was just on in the picture because it looks cool haha but right now I'm waiting for my seeds to sprout under a cfl but today I'm taking the black star back apart so I can reconnect the fan wiring. I did it initially because I figured led's couldn't give off THAT much heat but boy was I wrong. Thanks for all the input everyone and I'll be sure to keep you updated on my first grow!
First seed has sprouted! Its a little over a half inch above the soil! On one of the other ones I can start to see the sprout come up so hopefully she will show herself by tomorrow!!! This is a good feeling! Now I at least have something to look at!!!
Some let it fall off, which is fine in most cases. I remove it myself, VERY CAREFULLY! Never had a prob doing that.
Yeah I put a drop of water on it to soften it up then CAREFULLY took it off with a tweezers a few minutes later. They are all looking good and the last one is almost out of the soil but not yet. I'll probably post a picture tomorrow of how they are all doing because they should all be sprouted by then!
Okay so my sprout is leaning over... Is my light too far away from it causing it to stretch too much! I don't like how it's drooping to one side. Should I move my blackstar closer and if so how close should It be because I don't want to burn my baby's